The Synthetic Biology Mashup is a weekly review of articles and news related to synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. While we share most of this on our twitter feed, if you need to catch up on this week’s news just read ahead!
Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation developing new RNAi technologies for crops
Tekmira is receiving $16.5 M in near-term payments from Monsanto as part of a collaborative project to develop RNA interference (RNAi) technologies for use in pest, virus, and weed control. This is one of the first major investments from a large corporation in a company developing RNAi technologies. Much hype has been generated around the potential therapeutical application of RNAi, which is a small strand of RNA that specifically targets and silences an individual gene. Tekmira Pharmaceuticals has been particularly successful in its RNAi technologies compared to other companies because it has developed an effective delivery vehicle for RNAi to cells: a lipid nanoparticle which encapsulates the RNAi. This lipid nanoparticle technology both enables more effective delivery and reduces the toxicity of the treatment. Such delivery vehicles have the potential for a wide variety of biological applications beyond crops. Tekmira Pharmaceutical is also applying their lipid nanoparticle RNAi encapsulation technology as a potential tumor-targeting cancer treatment, currently in stage 1/2 clinical trials.
FDA Planning to Discuss Genetic Engineering Experiments in Humans
For its next public meeting these upcoming Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th of February, the FDA has announced that it will discuss possible experiments in humans to create hybrid oocytes. These oocytes are made from nuclear DNA from a first women and the egg of another healthy woman alongside with its mitochondrial DNA for in vitro fertilisation. This is an attempt to address issues arising from women having oocytes with certain types of mitochondrial diseases which can lead to infertility or transmission of the disease. If approved these experiment, it would be the first time that such a genetic engineering approach would be used in humans.
MIT’s Synthetic Biology Center and Pfizer collaboration
This past Thursday, February 20th, MIT’s Synthetic Biology Center and Pfizer Inc., a large international pharmaceutical company, announced a three year research collaboration. The collaboration is meant to foster the use of the rapid advances within synthetic biology and improve the efficiency of the drug discovery and production. A particular focus of the collaboration will be on genome engineering methods to improve next-gen protein expression systems.
Why Aren’t More People Investing in Synthetic Biology Companies?
In a recent article published in the SynBioBeta blog, Jenny Rooke investigates what are the current challenges are in investing in synthetic biology companies as compared to the rest of the biotech world. She identifies four main reasons, (i) the transition from an academic lab to a company generating profit is not streamlined, (ii) the synthetic biology entrepreneurial community is relatively new, and business models have not yet passed the test of time, (iii) most of the existing companies tend to focus on broad technics or platform with less focus on specific possible markets, and finally (iv) the lack of transparency makes it difficult to identify market opportunities.
That’s it for this week’s Synthetic Biology Mashup! A suggestion or a question? Shoot us an email!
